THE EVOLUTION OF THE MIND. 267 



To each of these monkeys I gave an egg, the first 

 that any of them had ever seen. 



The baby monkey, Mono, being of an egg-eating 

 race, devoured his egg by the operation of instinct or 

 inherited habit. On being given the egg for the first 

 time, he cracked it against his upper teeth, making a 

 hole in it, and sucked out all the substance. Then hold- 

 ing the egg-shell up to the light and seeing that there 

 was no longer anything in it, he threw it away. All this 

 he did mechanically, automatically, and it was just as 

 well done with the first egg he ever saw as with any 

 other he ate. All eggs since offered him he has treated 

 in the same way. 



The monkey Bob took the egg for some kind of 

 nut. He broke it against his upper teeth and tried to 

 pull off the shell, when the inside ran out and fell on 

 the ground. He looked at it for a moment in bewilder- 

 ment, took both hands and scooped up the yolk and the 

 sand with which it was mixed and swallowed the whole. 

 Then he stuffed the shell itself into his mouth. This act 

 was not instinctive. It was the work of pure reason. 

 Evidently his race was not familiar with the use of eggs 

 and had acquired no instincts regarding them. He 

 would do it better next time. Reason is an inefificient 

 agent at first, a weak tool ; but when it is trained it be- 

 comes an agent more valuable and more powerful than 

 any instinct. 



The monkey Jocko tried to eat the egg offered him 

 in much the same way that Bob did, but, not liking the 

 taste, he threw it away. 



The low intelligence of the lower animals — as the 

 fishes — may be at times worse than none at all. If mental 

 development were a real advantage to fishes it would 

 arise through natural selection. The fishes taken in 

 a large pound net, as I have observed them in Lake 



